


Swimming with Sea Monsters

by TalulahGosh



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Consensual Kink, Did I mention Shameless Smut?, Dom!OFC, Eventual Romance, F/F, F/M, Face-Fucking, Face-Sitting, Light BDSM, Married Life, Multi, Other, POV Alternating, Polyamory, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Shameless Smut, Threesome - F/F/M, Tropical Vibes, sub!Tej, switch!Ivan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:49:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25948369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalulahGosh/pseuds/TalulahGosh
Summary: Ivan and Tej, on their exile/honeymoon at the Yllan consulate, meet a mysterious Betan — or is that Jacksonian? — musician and fall into a romance of the throuple variety.>Featuring an OFC with Betan hermaphrodite anatomy.
Relationships: Ivan Vorpatril/Tej Arqua Vorpatril, Ivan Vorpatril/Tej Arqua Vorpatril/Original Female Character
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

A terrible noise shot through the calm Ylla seaside.

Ivan Xav Vorpatril’s eyes darted around. Tej could see his trained military mind running through possible sources of the clangor: bombs; plasma arcs; collapsing buildings; a 47-ground-car-pileup.

Ivan Xav looked impressively professional, she thought, for a man wearing only shorts and flip-flops and holding an ice cream cone, which he was now brandishing like a stunner.

Then an element of repetition asserted itself in the noise, and it became apparent that the sound they were hearing was _music_.

Ivan Xav slipped with obvious relief back out of military mode. Attempting to regain control of the rapidly melting ice cream situation, he sucked a running droplet off of his fingers.

“I could have gotten that for you,” she teased, waggling her tongue at him and winning an amused grin in return. She cocked her head, locating the source of the music, and by unspoken agreement they wandered that way.

The sight that met their eyes was as unexpected as the sounds echoing around the saltgrass dunes and boardwalk shops. Along little cabana bar at which Tej and Ivan Xav had often stopped for fruity drinks, there was an outgrowth of tangled audio equipment, and in the center of it was a musician, twiddling knobs, tapping pedals, and occasionally plucking at a stringed instrument.

Waves of blasting, rhythmic, echoing sound crashed against the attractive but mildly toxic ocean swells coming the other way.

A few vacationers had been sent scurrying by the performance. The bartender was staring in dull horror. Perhaps he had been led to expect something with more of a relaxing tropical island vibe from today’s musical act.

He probably also hadn’t expected this stage costume, which consisted of an iridescent icosahedral mask, colorful boots and matching Betan-style sarong, some metal spikes, and little else. Small, perky breasts jiggled delightfully to the beat as the performer swayed. 

A little stack of hand-printed shirts arrayed for sale on a folding camp-stool next to an amplifier, rendered the performer’s name in lurid, jagged type as _Xplozia_ , over a stylized drawing of flaming wreckage.

Ivan Xav, having by now reduced the ice cream cone to a final bite size nubbin, offered it her way, since she had long since gobbled up the last of her own. 

Tej grabbed it cleanly from his fingers with her teeth. She crunched thoughtfully, staring into the musician’s featureless mask.

Xplosia began to sing, in a pleasant midrange that hovered like an alien insect over the instrumental havoc.

Taj caught her husband’s eye, flashing a grin. Perhaps feeling sorry for the bar owner, he was sitting down at the bar to order drinks.

The music wasn’t exactly _nice_ , but it did make her want to move. It took her back to something half-remembered. A performance from her childhood on Jackson’s Whole, she realized. Not the same music, or the same musician, but a certain feeling, strange and enticing.

She liked it quite a bit, she decided.

As she spun, the full warmth of Ivan Xav’s attention fell upon her. His sincere appreciation for her artistry as a dancer had melted her heart after years of nothing but hyper-critical comments from her too-freaking-perfect siblings.

But he didn’t often get to see her dance in the skimpy swimsuit she was wearing this afternoon, and she could tell he was enjoying the view. Both of the views, in fact. She couldn’t blame him. The musician’s lithe, half-nude body twisted with a grace that was both sexy and dignified, flavors that mixed strangely with the harshness of the sound.

After a few sips on his drink, Ivan Xav gamely joined her on the tiny dance floor. His training in Barrayaran ballroom dance had done nothing to prepare him for this moment, but she appreciated the effort not to let her flounder all alone.

With her finely tuned senses, she could easily smell his, ahem, rising attraction. That was nothing new, of course. The scent of Ivan Xav at attention was like a warm bath for her brain to sink into. If she were here right now, Rish would no doubt have some cutting words about Tej’s own scent signals.

Tej felt a pang of homesickness, if not for her home itself then for her odd-sister. But she was fervently glad for the freedom to take Ivan Xav home later and strip him out of those cute little shorts as soon as she got him in the door — light-years from any of her family’s commentary.

* * *

“I’d like to buy a shirt, when you’ve got a moment.”

Xplozia, kneeling on the sandy boardwalk as she disassembled her gear, glanced up at the voice, acknowledging it with a quick nod.

The owner of the cabana bar had cut her set short, but at least he had paid her the promised pittance, albeit with bad grace.

All told, it could have gone worse, she thought.

She eyeballed her newest fan, and fished a men’s large out of her display.

“Oh, it was supposed to be for...” he looked uncertainly at the woman sitting next to him at the bar. She shook her head, waving him off, and he accepted the shirt with a good-natured shrug.

The thin fabric stretched very attractively over the tall man’s tanned muscles as he tried it on. He was quite pretty, although he could only be overshadowed by the woman he’d been dancing with. Amber eyes blazed from her cinnamon face and long waves of black hair.

Xplozia felt her genetically enhanced sex drive send a helpful rush of blood southwards, and made a practiced effort to ignore it, dragging her eyes with difficulty from the acres of soft curves covered by just a few square inches of fabric and some very finely wrought jewelry.

She shifted uncomfortably, a blush creeping down her face, and, not for the first time, cursed her makers.

When she was performing for an audience, she could set her brain onto another track, and forget her appetites for a while.

On Escobar, she had performed for hundreds, commanding the stage, feeding off the the crowd in a way that ached in her memory.

For a few wonderful years, she had believed the Jacksonians had really forgotten her. Then, the narrowest of escapes. Cappers.

A friend from the underground music scene had helped her get safe passage off-planet with fake papers.

She couldn’t understand why they were coming after her now, but she hoped Ylla was so out of the way no one would bother her here.

She knew she was taking a risk, and probably a foolish one, in showing herself publicly like this. But it was important to her to keep performing. She had forged a new identity for herself, and she wasn’t going to let them take that away from her.

“Oh!” she said, accepting the man’s payment for the shirt plus a generous extra. “Thanks so much!”

“Have you,” the stunning woman started slowly, regarding her curiously, “Spent a lot of time in the Whole?”

Xplozia froze.

“What makes you say that?”

“Your accent. It sounds mostly Betan, but with a hint of Jacksonian.”

The woman, she realized, was Jacksonian herself. Not good. She probably wasn’t rental meat — rental meat didn’t come in the form of ample, bejeweled bosoms bouncing in tiny swimsuits — but Jacksonians who could afford fine jewelry could afford to hire rental meat when they sniffed out a bounty.

The man, she couldn’t place. But his bearing had a whiff of the military. Also not good.

On the other hand, they seemed for all the world like a friendly, generous couple hanging out on the beach in a resort town.

Even Jacksonian house barons, she thought, probably don’t like taking time out of their vacations to hire cappers if they can avoid it.

“Do you perform around here a lot?” the woman asked.

“I just arrived,” she said, settling into a barstool. “I’m...not sure there’s going to be much call for my kind of music here.”

“Well, if you do get another gig, let us know,” said the man, handing her a strange little card that read simply, “Lord Ivan Xav Vorpatril.”

“Lord Ivan...” she said, trailing off.

“That’s me,” he said brightly. “And this is Lady Tej.”

“I’m...” she hesitated. “Xplozia. You knew that. It’s a stage name, but it’s also my name,” she added with a touch of defiance.

“I hope this isn’t rude,” Lady Tej began, “But, do you prefer ‘it’, or...”

Xplosia felt her breath catch. “I...”

Lord Ivan looked as gobsmacked as she felt. “Wait... _she_ is an _it_?”

“I use _she_ ,” Xplozia said, perhaps more sharply than she had intended. “I don’t like being called _it_ ,” she said, a bit more softly.

Her makers had used the pronoun _it_ for her. Not out of deliberate cruelty, but because she had been conceived using a stolen Betan hermaphrodite genome, and given a faux–Betan hermaphrodite upbringing, to fill the role she had been created for.

Most herms, Xplozia had been told, proudly used it/its pronouns. But she had never been to Beta Colony, and she didn’t care to live the way her creators had expected.

“How did you know?” she said, suspicion glinting in her voice.

Lady Tej sighed.

“I have a _very_ sensitive nose,” she said. “Sorry.”

Xplozia took a thoughtful sip of her drink.

“I liked your dancing, Lady Tej.” She paused. “Yours not so much, Lord Ivan.”

Lord Ivan laughed.

Who the fuck goes around calling himself a “Lord”, anyway?

“Just Ivan and Tej is fine,” Lord Ivan says, as if sensing her mental air quotes around the title.

“You know,” said Tej, “I could introduce you to some people. There’s not exactly a lot of culture around here, but we have friends who run an art space in town.”

“Tej has put on a couple dance performances there,” Ivan added. “I bet those art weirdoes would get a kick out of your music.”

Tej punched him in the arm. Xplozia smiled, blushing.

The image of Tej dancing was stuck in her head like a catchy tune, which made for a challenging combination with her overactive libido.

She was imagining one of the dance clubs on Escobar where she used to go when she was especially horny and felt she needed more relief than the usual two-or-three-times-daily self-care session.

The people who frequented those sorts of clubs marked their sexual interest by a local version of the Betan earring system. Xplozia’s usual signal: top, looking for casual sex, any gender.

Find a dance partner who moved well and had a sparkle in their eye. Get to a state of sweaty exhilaration. Link hands, make a dash for a bathroom or sideroom or quiet corner. Or, on one remarkable occasion, just do it right there on the dancefloor.

She tried to turn her attention to Ivan instead, but it only added him to the vision. Now she imagined the three of them on the dancefloor. Tej dancing for her, and Ivan on his knees, taking Xplozia’s cock between his lips...

Nope, nope, nope. 

Time to make a getaway, she thought, standing up so abruptly she experienced a moment of dizziness.

When she had arrived at Ylla’s quiet little spaceport, she had been warned not to go swimming. There were sea monsters on this planet, and they’d chew you up before they realized they couldn’t digest you.

She made her farewells as politely as she could under the circumstances, and then almost ran away to where she could get this out of her head without embarrassing herself any further.

* * *

“I thought she was hiding something,” Ivan said, as they followed the beachside path back to their home, lined with native Yllan succulent trees.

“She’s lived at least part of her life on Jackson’s Whole,” Tej grinned. “Of course she’s hiding something.”

“Jacksonian, really? She seemed entirely Betan to me,” Ivan said. “Especially the, uh, naked from the waist up thing.”

“Noticed that, did you?”

Tej was laughing at him.

“I’m not just going to not notice naked titties,” he said primly.

“Well, she noticed you,” Tej said. “And me, too.”

“You’re saying she has the hots for us? _Both_ pf us?”

“This nose doesn’t lie.”

Ivan had left his wild, youthful days of more-than-twosomes behind when he became a happily married Vor lord. Or so he had thought.

But Tej had hinted on a couple occasions that she didn’t feel they had to be bound by Barrayaran standards of sexual monogamy.

Tej was the sort of bedmate who got off on pleasing her partner and earning praise for it. Her kink for approval, Ivan suspected, was the key advantage that had led her to outperform her siblings in the sex classes her parents had paid for when she was a teenager.

That whole chapter in Tej’s life still thoroughly boggled Ivan’s mind, whenever he thought about it.

One of Tej’s trio of sexuality teachers had been a herm. That’s one bit of her erotic arts training she hasn’t had an opportunity to apply in the real world, he supposed.

Until now?

Ivan found his wife’s submissive qualities very agreeable, but she had pointed out that he sometimes liked things the other way, too.

They had once attempted a bedroom re-enactment of their memorable first meeting, during which she had left him tied to a chair with a stunner hangover. The roleplay had gone rather more steamily than the stressful original version. But she had found it difficult to be as ruthless with him as the part of erotic captor demanded.

Afterwords, she had brought up the idea that a third bedmate could supply him that missing ingredient. He had laughed off the idea at the time, but now it hung in the air.

He thought of her, sandwiched between three Betan licensed practical sex therapists, one of each gender, getting her brains fucked out. It was an appealing image. Was that a thing she had been missing?

They crunched up the gravel path. He looked her in the eye as he opened the door. She caught his meaning.

He leaned in for a kiss, taking her chin in his hand, tasting the tropical cocktail on her tongue.

“Hands and knees,” he said quietly, as the door clicked shut behind them.

He turned around, and there she was, looking up at him from the cool stone floor of the vestibule. He pulled the Xplozia t-shirt over his head, and hung it with exaggerated neatness on the coatrack.

Tej giggled.

“What would you do if she were here with us right now?” he asked.

* * *

Tej considered Ivan’s question. She shivered, not just from the shock of the air-conditioning.

He let his shorts drop to the floor, fully nude before her. A drop of pre-cum stood waiting for her.

“I suppose I’d have to put it to the two of you,” she said. “Heads or tails? And let you fight it out for the prime spot if it comes to that.”

She gave him a winning smile. His look back returned it with fiery interest.

“I have an idea!” he said suddenly, a little boyishly, starting to bound away. He slid to a halt, and pointed back to her.

“Don’t move,” he said, regaining a bit of his more authoritative demeanor, although the effect was spoiled by the jaunty way his dick wobbled as he ran upstairs.

The stone bit softly into her palms and shins, but she could handle far worse than that for the sake of her art.

He returned a moment later with a strap-on they had purchased some time ago. He made a satisfied sound as he managed to seat the dildo firmly in its housing.

He strode around her to the doorway, and for a moment she thought he was about to throw it open and display her ass to the world. Not that there was likely to be anyone out there.

Instead, he knelt between her legs, and tugged the crotch of her swimsuit aside, allowing a cool draft to tingle against her growing wetness. She heard him coat the artificial instrument in lubricant, and then he touched it to her entrance.

Slowly, achingly slowly, he pressed it into her, to the hilt, and she heard herself give a deep cry of pleasure at the sensation of fullness. Then he stood up and walked around her, kneeling down once more in front of her face.

He placed his cock to her lips, and she eagerly kissed away the droplet at the tip.

He began to work his way into her mouth, and her training took over. She opened herself up for him, just the way she knew he liked it.

Follow the hand bunched in hair. Loosen the jaw muscles. Quiet the rebellious esophageal nerve clusters. Become softness and light.

Finally, slowly, agonizingly, she hit home, nose pressing against his pubic mound, the intoxicating smell of him filling her as much as his cock in her throat.

“Every fucking time,” he gasped. “I’m shocked again. You’re just too amazing.”

She buzzed a low sound of pleasure deep in her throat, knowing how it would vibrate through him.

She hadn’t noticed the dildo slipping most of the way out of her, until it slammed back in, sending a wave through her. The strap-on belt, she realized. He was gripping the leather thongs so that he could fuck her pussy and her face at the same time.

There’s that efficient military mind of his, she thought, feeling giddy.

Then she and Ivan Xav and their imaginary partner began to move together, and she didn’t think much more about anything for a while, just lived in the motion.

Later, after she was left in a quivering, satisfied heap, he helped her off the stone floor, wiping drool and come from her chin and whispering sweet nothings in her ear.

The way he held her, massaging the feeling back into her shins and feet and wrists, his hands slick with her climaxes, she knew that she had everything in the Galaxy that she really needed, right here.

On the other hand, she thought, grinning up at him as they stepped into the shower, it seems greedy of us to hoard this feeling all to ourselves.

After all, pleasure isn’t diminished when it’s shared. In Tej’s experience, very much the opposite.


	2. Chapter 2

Xplozia groaned at the jaunty morning light filtering through her grubby apartment window, rolling over.

Get up, she thought. Take a shower. Then she lay there for another hour.

She had lost her job at a boardwalk fried food stand last week, after throwing a fizzy drink in a very deserving customer’s face.

Turning over again, her cheek pressed against a sharp little piece of cardboard. She squinted at it.

Lord Ivan Xav Vorpatril.

Had it been sitting in her bedclothes for a month, waiting to stab her?

She threw it, hoping for a satisfying _whap_ against the wall, but it just fluttered silently to the floor.

Groaning some more, she got up and dragged herself into the shower cubicle. When she emerged, she spotted the little card again, and heaved a sigh.

Sure enough, Lord Ivan and Lady Tej were easy to find by name on the comconsole. She did a little snooping.

Lord Ivan was...some sort of Barrayaran Vorsomething. She quickly lost interest in the ins and outs of that weird barbaric empire.

Lady Tej, now she was something. The daughter of a Great House baron. Xplozia’s mind reeled. 

What were they doing _here_ , on the sort of planet you went to hoping not to be found? Probably some sort of house alliance, she supposed. Tej would have been married off in order to cement a deal with the Empire. And Ivan? Maybe he had been shipped out to the ass end of the Galaxy because he was deemed a potential usurper.

She tried to square the mid-30s man she’d seen dancing awkwardly on the boardwalk with the idea of a threat to anyone’s imperium. It was difficult.

There wasn’t much more out there, although her search did, for some reason, bring up a surprisingly popular time-lapse video of an ugly building slowly sinking into the ground.

And then there was the listing in a local nightlife directory about Tej’s dance performance tonight at the art space.

She should really just be looking for a new job.

On the other hand, she hated that idea.

She arrived 15 minutes late, and had to scoot apologetically past a few artsy types who reminded her achingly of her friends back on Escobar. She settled into an empty folding chair.

Xplozia had not gotten a chance to _really_ take in Tej’s dancing before, during her own performance. Now, she was impressed despite herself.

Tej didn’t have what you’d call a dancer’s figure, but she knew what she was doing out there. Her parents must have hired some expensive tutors. No longer in her revealing beachwear, Tej had been poured into a confining bodysuit that was doing its very best to keep her ample breasts in check as she swirled around the floor.

She spotted Ivan, dwarfing one of the little plastic chairs and watching Tej with a smile Xplozia was beginning to recognize as having a bit of a “can you believe my luck?” vibe.

She wanted to wipe that smile off his face.

She found herself imagining how she might go about doing so. A good smack across the cheek? There was something about Ivan that made her quite certain she wouldn’t be the first woman to give him a ringing slap.

Of course, it didn’t have to be on the face. She pictured him bent over, ass checks blazing, eyes downcast with humiliation and desire...now _there_ was an image she could square with what she had seen of this man.

Her cock was threatening to burst through her sarong. She shifted in her chair and tried to concentrate on the dance.

For all her obvious talent, Tej lacked the sort of technical perfection she remembered seeing from some of the gengineered dancers she’d seen on Jackson. 

The problem, Xplozia decided, was the music. It was too pretty, too perfect. Against such a crystalline backdrop, Tej’s minute mistakes were magnified.

She began to imagine a new score, rough and powerful, with an energy that would not just be forgiving of error, but that would revel in it, would grow through the imperfections until they were inextricable from the beauty of the work.

She drew the lines of the music around Tej, following her movements with swooping bursts of half-chaotic imagined sound.

When the performance ended, she quickly slipped away. She needed to capture the sparks flying behind her eyes before they burned out. She spent the rest of the night and the next day recording.

A few days later, she was stuck.

She nearly threw out what she had done, but at last she won, or lost, some sort of internal war.

She dialed up Tej on her comlink.


	3. Chapter 3

As Ivan wandered through the winding halls of the art space, a familiar sort of din impressed itself upon him. Xplozia’s music wafted from Tej’s practice room.

This marked the third time that the Betan — or Jacksonian, or whatever — musician had come to rehearse with Tej, which he supposed meant it was officially a Regular Thing. 

Last time, he had stopped by and brought the two women takeout after their session, and Ivan and Tej had pried loose some appallingly funny stories of Xplozia’s experiences in the Escobaran underground music scene. He could see why Tej had taken a shine to the slender, fierce-eyed maniac.

Perhaps he was, too, he thought.

He and Tej had spoken of it again that night, the idea of sharing their bed with another. Tej had forced him, under what he considered _very_ unfair circumstances, to admit that he’d appreciate having certain things done to him that Tej herself was too much of a softie to pull off. 

Could Xplozia pull those things off? He suspected so.

He opened the door, and there was Tej, dancing to the strange music, matching it, finding new movements to complement the spiky rhythms.

The performance ended just a few seconds after he arrived. She turned to him, her bearing changing dramatically as she transformed from dancer to normal person. Normally, he’d have called that excellent timing, but this time he was left intensely curious about the rest of the new routine.

Tej, mopping a slight sheen of sweat on her brow, drank from a water bottle. He gave her his most winning smile.

“Ready for date night?”

She grinned back. “Just gotta freshen up.”

Ivan’s eyes went wide as Tej stripped out of her sweaty leotard right there, kicking it off as she headed for the little shower cubicle.

Xplozia’s eyes were pretty wide too. Well, she could hardly complain about getting flashed, Ivan thought, if she was going to go around everywhere in only a Betan sarong, titties out.

Xplozia set down her instrument, looking nervous. “Uh, I’ll just get going...”

“Oh! You’re invited, too,” Tej put in. This was news to Ivan. Xplozia looked back and forth between them, uncertainly.

“Uh...” Ivan began.

“Ivan Xav, don’t try and tell me you can’t show two women a good time in one night. I’ve heard _stories_.”

He gulped.

He looked at his wife who, was smiling sweetly at him, with just a hint of wickedness, looking over her shoulder from the bathroom doorway. 

“Xplozia,” Tej said, “I’m sure you’ve worked up a sweat, too. Want to join me?”

Xplozia was blushing furiously.

Ivan didn’t quite know how it happened, but moments later he found himself standing awkwardly in the practice room lavatory, watching his wife step into the warm spray of a shower occupied by a hermaphrodite woman with an impossible to ignore hard-on.

This whole thing had a whiff of conspiracy, he thought.

“...so, Ivan Xav spent _all night_ in bed getting these lucky ladies off every which way,” Tej was saying with barely contained laughter, “All to cover for the fact that he couldn’t get it up, because he’d been drugged with some sort of weird Cetagandan impotence serum.”

Xplozia looked at him with what looked like real concern. “Wait...are you saying he can’t...”

“It was strictly temporary!” Ivan growled. Tej burst out laughing, and after a moment, so did Xlpozia.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s not funny.”

They didn’t stop laughing.

Ivan leaned back against the sink, crossing his arms.

Normally, he might have slipped in there with his wife, to ‘help’ her wash. There was really no room for a third body in there, though. He was left to watch helplessly.

Not such a chore, of course. His vision danced with soapy butts, swaying breasts cascading with water. He almost didn’t notice when the two of them began to kiss.

Ivan’s dick throbbed in his pants. This was real torture.

Tej palmed Xplozia’s cock, giving it that squeeze he knew so well, the one that promised a thousand pleasures.

“You know, Ivan Xav,” Tej began with an innocent tone that fooled no one. “Xplozia was gengineered to have an enhanced sex drive.”

“It’s very distracting,” Xplozia sighed.

“I thought,” Tej paused. “Xplozia, would it be more comfortable for you at dinner if you can get some _relief_ before we go?”

Xplozia’s eyes narrowed into a very slightly predatory smile, aimed at Ivan. “Oh, yes.”

She stepped out of the shower towards where he was leaning. Water ran down her body, and his eyes followed it. Her dick pointed directly at him.

“Ivan,” she said. “Dry me off.” He glanced down stupidly at the stack of fresh towels by his elbow.

Slowly, he took one in hand and brought it to Xplozia’s shoulder, patting tentatively at the droplets.

It was his first time in a long time extending such an intimate touch to anyone other than Tej, and he glanced over at her nervously. Tej had an intense expression he couldn’t quite interpret.

“Don’t look at her, Ivan,” said Xplozia, directing his jaw with her hand. “Look at me.”

He looked into her dark brown eyes, and almost shivered in the steamy washroom as he resumed his toweling, circling around to her back. He raised the soft fabric to her short brown hair, dyed purple at the tips, and she leaned her head into the motion like a cat.

He worked his way down her chest and belly to the trail of hairs below, and now he was kneeling before her. Holding her gaze, he squeezed the towel gently around her hard cock, and she gave a low growl of approval. 

He swept the remaining droplets from her lower legs, and then returned to reverently drying the area between her thighs.

He had seen enough pornography in his day to know what to expect, but this was his first time up close and personal with Betan herm anatomy, the result of one of humankind’s earliest large-scale genetic engineering projectes. 

As the long-time owner of a pair of externally located balls, Ivan couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy. Some genius boffin had managed to arrange it so that Xplozia could have hers conveniently tucked away on the inside. Ivan didn’t have much love for the idea of gengineering, but he had to admit that the Betans had done good work.

His eyes flicked back to hers. Her fingers brushed his cheek tenderly.

“Now be a good little Lord and suck my dick,” she said.

Ivan’s stomach fluttered. I feel like a virgin again, he thought. I suppose I am, kind of.

It wasn’t the first time he had touched someone else’s cock. There had been a moment of awkward teenage fumbling with Gregor that gave him a sort of vertigo whenever he thought of it. And then there had been the rather intense night he’d spent with Dono Vorrutyer — but he had been known as Donna then, and the cock he’d been thoroughly fucked with had been a strap-on.

This was new.

Ivan was well aware that many people viewed him as lazy and unmotivated. But he only avoided the sort of challenges he didn’t like, such as Barrayaran politics, in order to make room for the sort of challenges he did like, such as pleasing a pretty woman, or possibly two. And at the moment, he was right where he wanted to be.

He opened wide.


	4. Chapter 4

It had really been too long, Xplozia thought.

She’d been afraid to seek out company for so long. And while she was _very_ experienced at fulfilling her own amplified sexual needs, there was nothing quite like finding someone willing and eager to be used. 

Lord Ivan was clearly not an expert at this, but he knew enough to keep his teeth out of the way, and largely left the rest to her.

She began to move more confidently in his mouth. He gagged a little, but kept it together. She glanced up at her reflection, half-obscured in the foggy mirror: a cat-like grin melting into the mist; the back of Ivan’s head swaying in time with her thrusts; a shadow moving behind her.

A stab of fear froze her for a moment. Then the shadow resolved into Tej. Obviously. Idiot.

Her next thrust was savage, and Ivan coughed, pulling away.

Tej knelt down next to him, taking his chin in her hand as he sputtered. She kissed him, and squeezed fondly at the tent in his trousers.

Xplozia, leaning against the sink and breathing hard, made a guttural sound and pressed her cock into the space where Tej and Ivan’s lips met. Tej ran her lips and tongue along the shaft, then swung adroitly around and took it into her mouth.

With a practiced motion she descended, making her way to the root, forcing Xplozia to steady herself. She gazed in wonder at the vision below, the shockingly beautiful face, the prodigious breasts swaying gently, beaded with water, the bright eyes drinking in her appreciation and magnifying it back at her.

Holy crap.

With agnozing slowness, Tej rose back off of her cock, breathing thickly as she pulled away. She took it in hand and guided it back to Ivan, who had managed to recover. Xplozia needed little more. 

She filled his throat with her climax almost immediately, as Tej brushed his hair with a hand.

Xplozia accidentally activated the faucet as she leaned hard against the sink.


	5. Chapter 5

Dinner had turned out to be surprisingly pleasant, Xplozia thought. And not just because it was the biggest, best meal she’d had since Escobar, although that did help. Ivan and Tej had kept the appetizers coming, and who was she to turn them down?

It had taken all her power not to eat herself sick. She should really try not to go so long on nothing but instant meals and fried boardwalk food again.

But they’d also kept her talking, and laughing, which had helped keep her from embarassing herself by inhaling _all_ of the little dishes.

And, thankfully, her raging hormones had been kept somewhat at bay by their earlier “relief” efforts. Ivan and Tej, on the other hand, had been left hanging, unsated. At last, the shoe is on the other foot, she thought, grinning to herself as their dishes were cleared away.

It might be fun to tease them for a while longer before she...

No.

She shook her head at the question in their eyes, as the three of them rose to leave.

“I’d better go home.”

Her mind fumbled for an excuse, but she didn’t have one. She just didn’t belong with these people. She should be laying low, not dining in nice restaurants with rich people.

Rich people who had gotten where they were via who know what trail of exploitation and cruelty. Ivan and Tej might _seem_ kind and generous, but that, she well knew, was something the powerful could turn on and off whenever it suited them.

Lord Ivan might get off on pretending to be in her power, but she couldn’t afford to be in his power for real. She’d talked to enough older Escobarans to know that Barrayarans were bad news.

Still, the image of him and Tej, and their knees in front of her, on the bathroom floor...well, she was going to hold onto that one. It warmed her thoughts as she climbed the stairs of her apartment building, a cheap plastic prefab construction lined with catwalks overlooking the poisonous ocean.

She froze.

Something was different about her lock.

Had it had been broken, and then carefully fixed, since she left this morning?

She ran.

* * *

“There’s something not right with her,” Tej said, as they settled into the groundcar. “She’s scared.”

Ivan paused in the act of attempting to nuzzle his wife’s neck. 

“Scared of what? Like, commitment? Or people with guns?”

“She’s got some sort of connection to Jackson’s Whole that she’s keeping mum about. I know what being on the run looks like.”

“Hmm. I dunno, she might just be jittery.”

He nuzzled his way up to her cheek. She made a “hmm” sound. He kissed her, and she kissed him back, and for a few moments there was no talking.

But then Tej pulled away again. Ivan groaned.

“I’m just concerned that...”

Something caught Ivan’s eye. A flash, from several floors up in a building a couple blocks away.

A stunner beam.

* * *

Xplozia pounded out of the lobby of her building, unsteady on her feet. That last shot had almost taken her down, and now her left side was a little wobbly.

In her steadier right hand she gripped the horrible thing she dreaded using.

Just as she hit the sidewalk, a groundcar screeched up in front of her, and she yelped as the passenger door flew open and hands reached out.

She tried to get away, but the grip was firm and her half-stunned arm was like jelly.

She screamed as the door slammed shut, and she bit wildly at the hands pulling at her.

A stunner beam sizzled against the car window, which didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would the cappers be shooting at their own getaway car?

Gradually, as the vehicle sped away, she realized it was Tej whom she had been biting.

What?

Her mind spun furoiusly.

She brandished her one remaining piece of leverage, aiming it between Tej’s eyes. Tej, the Jacksonian scion.

“Take me to the spaceport,” she hissed, trying to sound threatening. “Or...no, the police? No...”

“Oh, honey...” said Tej, looking at her with concern.

“ _First_ of all,” said Ivan, his voice taking on a peevish timbre, “You do _not_ fire a nerve disruptor at point blank, and especially not inside an armored car. You could wind up paralyzed just from the reflections.

“Second, right now you’re only being chased by some pretty inept Jacksonian thugs. If you kill us, you’ll triple your problems. You’ll have Tej’s nightmare family coming for you, _and_ Gregor.”

“That’s _The_ Gregor,” Tej added.

“Third,” said Ivan, eyes on the road, voice rising in pitch, “If you knew you were being tracked, _why_ did you print and distribute t-shirts with your name on them?”


	6. Chapter 6

Xplozia gave a long, low hum of frustration as she peered around the bland guest suite on the second floor of the Barrayaran consulate, with two beds, a sofa, and a little desk.

She rubbed at the pins and needles in her left shoulder.

The door slid open, and Ivan sidled in with a box.

“So, what,” Xplozia said, “Am I a hostage of the Barrayaran Imperium, now?”

“You’re welcome to piss off,” Ivan said cheerfully. “But you might want some of your stuff first.”

He set the box down on the desk, and Tej followed behind him with another one.

She saw a few of her clothes poking out of the boxes, and...she sighed with relief. She’d had to ditch her heavy bags of musical equipment in the chase, but here they were.

“The cappers tossed your apartment, but we had someone recover a few of your things.” Ivan sat down a little awkwardly at the desk.

“I know you don’t have much reason to trust us,” said Tej, sitting on the floor, arm draped over Ivan’s knee, “But we can keep you safe here, if you want. Or you can go to the local authorities.”

Xplozia considered her position.

“I _don’t_ trust you, but I for sure don’t trust the cops.”

She looked around at the anonymous room.

“Is this where you live?”

“Oh no,” said Ivan. “We have a house, but the consulate is safer for you, legally speaking.”

Tej shared a brief look with him, then turned back to her. “If you’re worried about being left alone in a government building with only total strangers...We could stay here with you.”

* * *

In the morning, Tej found Xplozia up on the roof, drinking coffee and making small talk with the Barrayaran consul, who had made himself a homey little trellised deck up here.

Xplozia smiled wanly at her as she approached. She didn’t look like she had slept well. Tej couldn’t blame her. The little guest suite here could sleep three comfortably enough, but, well...

The consul raised his mug to Tej in a mild greeting, and made his way past her, down the stairs.

Tej sat down, and for a moment, they just gazed out at the ocean. Somewhere in the distance, an enormous sea monster leapt 10 meters out of the water, splashing down again with a mouthful of birds.

“I guess I’m not very good at keeping a low profile,” said Xplozia. “I want to be on a marquee, not...” she gestured around at the consulate. “....hiding.”

“It probably wasn’t actually the t-shirts that led them to you.”

“No. But.” She paused. “After I made it to Escobar, things were really good, for a long time. I got cocky, I guess.

“I wrote a song, with some pointed lyrics about a certain Baron of a certain House Minor who wanted his own Betan herm. I’m sure I don’t need to tell _you_ about how these things are.

“The song made it back to the Whole. It was an underground hit, you might say. I didn’t think... I didn’t think he could reach me anymore. Stupid.”

Tej sipped at her coffee. She knew all too well how long the reach of an aggrieved Jacksonian Baron could be. She didn’t want to offer empty promises, but she and Ivan had some strings to pull. There must be a way to keep Xplozia safe without caging her up in this depressing little compound.


	7. Chapter 7

It had started as actual research.

While Lord Ivan and Lady Tej had been talking to their consul about who-knows-what Barrayaran legal implications of her stay, Xplozia had spent much of the evening searching newsfeeds, looking up cheap backwater planets, and anything else she could think of to try and plan out her next move.

Somewhere along the way, after Ivan and Tej had climbed into bed, her journey through the comconsole had veered somewhat.

She was already extra-horny all the time — it really wasn’t fair of Tej, who was outrageouly sexy when fully dressed, to putter around the suite yawning beautifully in only a sheer tank top and stretch pants.

So it was that she found herself viewing a selection of Barrayaran pornography in the dim light. The cultural context to some of this stuff was extremely mysterious. What were “muties” and why did so many people want to see them having their way with elegant Vor ladies?

It was too late by the time she noticed that the gentle snoring had stopped.

She nearly jumped out of her seat at the gentle touch on her shoulder.

“Sorry! I,” she sputtered to a halt. Tej’s soft hand moved, brushing along her clavicle.

Tej giggled.

On the comconsole screen was a woman in a half-baked replica of a beautiful, elaborate dress, being groped by a pair of actors in grotesque makeup.

“Who _are_ those guys?” Xplozia asked.

“Barrayarans have some weird ideas about sex, huh?”

“Yeah, well,” Xplozia frowned, “So do Jacksonians.”

She looked back, and saw a pair of grasping hands snake around Tej’s body, imitating the pose on the screen.

“I’ve got you now, my sweet!” called out Ivan in a goofy, villainous cackle. Tej snorted.

Xplozia grinned, shaking off the heart-pounding embarrassment of being caught. Embarrassment loves company, she thought, as Ivan waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“What do you think?” he asked Xplozia. “Shall we despoil this innocent Vor maiden?”

“I am _not_ an innocent Vor maiden,” Tej objected.

“It’s true,” Ivan allowed. “She’s much better at sex than any of them.”

“Is that so?” Xplozia said. She had risen to her feet and was grazing Tej’s throat with her lips.

“Well, I did have the finest Betan training on the subject,” Tej said as she wriggled between the bodies now pressed against her on both sides.

“First in her class,” said Ivan brightly, as he worked Tej’s shirt hem up her shapely hips. “A real sex-teacher’s pet.”

Xplozia watched hungrily as Tej raised her arms, allowing her breasts to pop free, bouncing heavily in a way that promised a great deal of attractive jiggling to come.

She didn’t think despoiling maidens was her idea of a good time, but ravishing an erotic virtuoso sounded closer to the mark.

She slipped her hand past the waistband of Tej’s pants, past soft curls, finding wetness, luxuriating in it. She slipped a finger inside, and Tej’s welcoming gasp turned into a moan as, Xplozia realized with an odd sort of surprise, her hand was joined by Ivan’s.

“How long were you two little freaks spying on me, anyway?” she hissed.

“Little?” Tej quirked an eyebrow, looking down at her.

Xplozia pulled her into a pugnacious kiss, drinking in Tej’s helpless pleasure as, held in Ivan’s strong arms, she rode the two of them to a knee buckling climax. 

Ivan held Tej for a moment longer as she shook quietly. Then, catching Xplozia’s eye with a fiery look, she pushed lightly out of his grasp and dropped to her knees. 

Tej unwrapped the musician’s cock from her sarong, and gave a long, reverent lick, starting from the slit at its base and rising up the shaft. 

“Greedy little show-off,” Xplozia said, pushing her fingers, sticky with Tej’s cunt, into the woman’s mouth. “Maybe I’ll let you prove what a good cocksucker you are later, if you earn it.”

As Tej ran her tongue along the fingers, Xplozia lifted her hand, forcing Tej to rise abruptly to her feet.

“Ivan, I’m going to fuck your wife. Please restrain her arms.”

Ivan dutifully led Tej to the bed, pulling her down onto her back with her wrists held high above her in one of his strong hands.

Xplozia mounted the bed and looked down on Tej. 

“Have you always wanted to have a House Baron’s daughter at your mercy?” Tej said sweetly.

“Ivan, shut her up,” she said. “In fact, stick your cock in her mouth, but don’t let her suck it. Just hold it there.”

She watched approvingly as Ivan guided his length between her lips, tilting her head back on the duvet with one hand while the other continued to clasp her wrists.

She hovered over Tej for a moment of charged stillness, then began slowly, teasingly, rubbing her dick against Tej’s entrance.

Tej made a pretty little muffled sound.

Finally, Xplozia plunged in deep. She held herself propped up on her arms as she found her rhythm, taking in the sight of those amazing sweat-shining breasts bouncing in time, the full lips grasping helplessly at Ivan’s unmoving cock, the waves of dark hair spilled all over the bedsheets.

A perfect moment.


End file.
